Month: January 2008

There’s a great piece in the NYT today on it. It’s what Obama himself predicted privately and publicly in the fall: that his mixed showing among black voters was a function of their disbelief that white voters would ever back a black man for president. Now they see that this bkack man can do it, and you can feel the emotions well up:

“People across America, even in Iowa of all places, can look across the color line and see the person,” said Mr. Brown, 35, who was working at the reception desk at DK’s Hair Design near Ladera Heights, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Describing himself as a “huge, huge supporter,” of Mr. Obama, Mr. Brown added: “So many times, our young people only have sports stars or musicians to look up to. But now, when we tell them to go to school, to aim high in life, they have a face to put with the ambition.”

Iowa was, as Obama saw ahead of time, the perfect catalyst for this dynamic. He was very candid about the ethnic make-up of Iowa and how it could prove what no words could argue. But what’s really ground-breaking, it seems to me, is how many African-Americans, especially the next generation, are in favor of Obama for far more than racial reasons. Here’s one typical email:

I’m a thirty-something African American voter here in South Carolina. Up until last night, reading and watching commentary from the MSM and pundit class talk about everything they knew nothing always sent me into a further depression. It is distressing to see so many supposedly intelligent people be totally clueless as to why Obama has succeeded the way he has. 

A large percentage of the Americans just don’t buy the 51/49% narrative that has been shoved down our throat throughout the Bush/Clinton years. Everyone is "shocked", except for the millions of voters who have simply been waiting for the leader willing to put his weapons down in the name of the common good.

Iowa is but a small representation of the change coming. Bush, Rove and Cheney have taught all of America how to be afraid, confusing the "wars" they fought decades ago with the "war" they are fighting now.  I don’t need a daddy like Giuliani to protect me, nor do I need a mommy like Clinton to tell me to take my health insurance whether I like it or not.  America needs leadership again – not shameless pandering, triangulation and poll-based policy proposals designed for only 51% of Americans.

A lot of people (both political and in the press) are very afraid of the Iowa results – that noise we hear is the sound of the walls built between us by politicians and angry boomers crashing down. My spirit was lifted this morning upon seeing my generation finally step up to the plate to reject the current status-quo in our politics. Obama will win – only those afraid of it refuse to believe it.

No, really … wait till Supporting Point Number 9:

A reader writes:

I’m a moderate-to-liberal Democrat who is no Mike Huckabee fan, but for what it’s worth, he wasn’t educated at a “Bible college”. Ouachita Baptist University is a Baptist institution in the same way that, say, Catholic University in Washington is a Catholic institution. The denominational footprint is undoubtedly heavier at the former than at the latter, but OBU’s curriculum isn’t all about careers in ministry or even about molding warriors for Jesus. There are a lot of similar schools in the heartland – Gordon College in Wenham also fits the bill – that, like Huckabee himself, wear their conservative denominational (or non-denominational Christian) heart on their sleeve but also seem a bit more at ease with the modern world than bubble-world schools like Bob Jones University or Oral Roberts.  I suspect that they may provide a window into what his core support is all about.

A reader diagnoses American politics:

Conservatism and liberalism have little meaning in today’s politics.  As has been pointed out so many times by you and others, the Republican party is a party held together by extremists, right wing Christianists, no-tax absolutists, royalists, xenophobes and others fearful of minorities, to name a few. This is a coalition spawned in the Reagan Administration but exposed in the Bush Administration.  Independents cannot tolerate it.  The extremists are at one another throats.  The party is in chaos.  Unless Hillary is elected or we experience another threat from the outside, the Republican Party is in an almost impossible situation.  Perhaps we will see the creation of a third party. But today the struggle is between realism and extremism, not conservatism and liberalism.

Speaking of the latter, check this out.

Some inferences from E.O. Wilson’s latest work:

With all necessary caveats against reductionism and misappropriation, we can ask: should human societies conceive of themselves in terms of  group-level selection? Have we already developed aspects of eusociality? And — just to make matters really interesting — could non-reproducing humans, such as (most) gays and lesbians, as well as heterosexuals who choose not to have kids, actually be a manifestation of this emergent eusociality?

It’s enough to make even a Clinton-phobe like me want to look away:

The first time [she was booed] was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you." The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning.

Yep: that sounds about right.

A reader writes:

You just realized this? I swear, the giddy suburban cheerleader quality of the Fox girls has been an ongoing cause of vitriol in my household. They just seem to confirm that peculiarly misogynistic, "who’s yah daddy?" sleaze exuded by all those pasty, wrinkled geezers. I’ve always imagined there must be some ingenious contraption hidden below the camera’s gaze, a ‘giggle prod" of sorts, that gives these teases’ bottoms a good squeeze every time the pruned-dude shows those bedroom eyes.

Another adds:

The women anchors do not look like Barbie dolls. They look like ex-porn stars. I think it’s the look they’re cultivating.